Stick vacuum cleaners are well known in the art. These vacuum cleaners are typically more lightweight than traditional upright cleaners and lack the driven brushrolls of traditional cleaners. The lighter weight and lack of a brushroll allows these cleaners to be more easily manipulated by a user. They can also be employed on a wider variety of surfaces than traditional upright cleaners.
For example, stick vacuum cleaners are often used on non-carpeted floor surfaces where a brushroll may damage the floor surface. The stick vacuum cleaner is also often used for surfaces with hard-to-reach areas or elevated surfaces. The lighter weight and more compact design of a stick vacuum compared to a traditional upright vacuum leads to greater maneuverability and ease of lifting.
As with any other vacuum cleaner, dirt-laden air is drawn into a stick vacuum cleaner through a nozzle by a suction that is created by a suction motor driving a suction fan or impeller. The dirt-laden air passes into a dirt collection receptacle such as a dirt cup or filter bag. The dirt is held in the receptacle and the air is exhausted.
An alternative to stick vacuum is the hand-held vacuum cleaner. Some hand held vacuum cleaners employ a powered rotary brush while others merely use a nozzle for suctioning dirt and debris from carpets, floors, and above floor surfaces.
Hand-held vacuum cleaners have become extremely popular for cleaning a variety of surfaces in homes, offices, cars or the like. They are utilized particularly for small pick up jobs or for cleaning in hard to reach places. By their nature, hand-held vacuum cleaner units are lightweight in order to enable a user to readily utilize them in places where canister, upright, stick or shop-type vacuum cleaners cannot be used or are inconvenient to use.
Of course, non-powered cleaning implements are also widely known. They are used for removing dust, dirt and/or liquids from hard surfaces. Brooms are one example. More recently, a cleaning implement which comprises a handle and a cleaning pad with a removable cleaning sheet has become popular for cleaning dry surfaces. The cleaning sheets exhibit the ability to pick up dust and debris from the surface to be cleaned. Once dirty, the sheet is discarded and replaced with a clean one. One such product is sold by Procter & Gamble under the trademark SWIFFER™.
This product uses non-woven sheets for dry dust-type cleaning. Such sheets typically utilize a composite of fibers where the fibers are bonded by adhesive, or are entangled in other ways. See for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,629,047 and 5,144,729. To provide durable wiping sheets, reinforcement means are combined with staple fibers in the form of continuous filament or network structure. Such cleaning sheets maximize the surface of the sheet and have electrostatic properties for collecting and/or attracting particulate dirt.
However, cleaning implements that comprise a removable cleaning sheet are not able to successfully remove larger debris or particles from the surface to be cleaned. Such debris may include animal hair or fur, dirt, sand or small pebbles brought in from outdoors, food crumbs or other larger particles of debris.
Thus, it would be advantageous to provide a cleaning product which combines the features of a vacuum cleaner such as a stick-type vacuum cleaner or a hand-held vacuum cleaner with a cleaning pad that comprises a removable cleaning sheet. Accordingly, it is desirable to develop a new and improved cleaning product which would overcome the foregoing difficulties and others and provide a cleaning pad in combination with a vacuum cleaner.